Bart Patrick, SAS UK

Marlow, Buckinghamshire

Head of Risk

Symantec’s research serves to highlight the costly impact of negligence in managing customer information, plus the increased risks of fraud and identity theft associated with this type of carelessness. However, these risks should not be the only concerns for organisations when dealing with customer data. It is the reputational risks which create the most costly, long term damage; with loss of data imbedding a persistent negative customer opinion of the company affected. Too often we are seeing customer data being mistreated by organisations which are storing and using the same customer data in multiple databases, creating the conditions where one department is not only unaware of what another is doing with that data, but also ignorant of how it this being shared with third parties. Inattention to operational risk is coming home to roost in companies with poor operational risk systems and processes – and the consumer is the one which suffers.

Organisations need to develop a culture that understands the value of customer information and create a more robust, secure strategy to ensure safer data sharing with third parties.